


when I fall asleep your eyes close

by tielan



Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-09-18 03:23:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16987191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: Love and acceptance into another family.





	when I fall asleep your eyes close

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lmizutani](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lmizutani/gifts).



 

The dress was slinky and didn’t feel entirely proper.

Dusky green chiffon layered over yellow silk, it flowed over her shoulders, skimmed her body, gathered in a little at the sleek silver-link belt that Persis had found for her to wear, before draping gently to a few inches above her ankles. When she moved in the pale green slippers that matched the dress, she could see her knees – a somewhat uncomfortable proposition for a girl from quiet little Glen St. Mary!

Except Rilla wasn’t going to be a girl from Glen St. Mary for much longer. When she married Kenneth Ford, she’d be thrust into the middle of Toronto society, not just a wife but a hostess like his mother and sister, expected to be in the very centre of activities and organisation.

It was a daunting thought and she’d been wrestling with it for the last three days since she’d arrived in Toronto.

But the dress really was lovely, and it had been a while since Rilla had had something so new and pretty and _modern_ , the economies of war and the tastes of Glen St. Mary limiting her options somewhat – to say nothing of where she could wear it. A dress like this would set the old gossips of Glen St. Mary afire – and probably the young gossips, too.

She wasn’t in Glen St. Mary anymore.

“It looks spectaular on you, Rilla,” Persis sighed, dangling her legs off the lounge in Rilla’s room where she’d come to have a chat before the guests arrived. “And so modish! That shade of green just makes me sallow, but it makes you glow like a Titian painting. All you need is—Oh!” The blue eyes she’d inherited from her mother brightened. “I have just the thing!”

Rilla watched in bemusement as Persis pulled open the door and hurried out, hailing a light and cheerful greeting to Kenneth as he came down the hallway.

Clad in a waistcoat and tails, his jacket beautifully fitted to his shoulders, Kenneth looked very little like the playmate Rilla’s brothers and sisters had played with all those years ago, or even the man who’d come back from the war a mere two months ago. He looked like the epitome of an elegant, urbane young man, with only the pale scar still marking his cheek to betray the years he’d spent in the war, along with a certain shadow that lay over him, much similar to the one Rilla had seen over Jem from time to time.

He paused in the door of her room, and something in him lit up. “You look like a June afternoon,” he said as he looked at her with a warm wonder in his eyes.

Blushing and self-conscious, Rilla did a little twirl in her heels. “It’s...like nothing I’ve ever worn before,” she said as the dress swung around her in a shimmer of light. “I don’t feel quite like myself in it.”

“Well, I think you look like the fulfilment of everything ‘Rilla’.” Kenneth’s smile gleamed with tenderness as he took a step into the room, then glanced down the hallway and gestured at her with his hands. “Come here.”

When she went, Kenneth picked her up in his arms and whirled them both around. She shrieked, laughing and shocked all at once, and while she was still spinning from the turn, he dropped her back to the floor, and bent and kissed her.

Until now, their kisses had been light and sweet – enraptured greeting or fond farewell. This was different, tender and fierce and demanding, and as Rilla laid her hands on his shoulders to balance herself after the dizzying turn, she let herself nestle into his arms, the silk of her dress and the fine linen of his shirt warming swiftly between their bodies. When he lifted his head from hers, she nearly gasped for air.

“I had to do that,” he murmured, dark blue eyes deep and intense with emotion. “You’re going to turn heads tonight, Rilla, and my friends will curse that I ever saw you first.

His words sent a thrill of delight in her, but the protest rose to her lips unbidden. “I’m just me. It’s the dress, Kenneth – fine feathers—”

He smiled. “The dress gives you a final polish, Rilla-my-Rilla, but you’d still be absolutely you in a gingham shirtwaist.”

“I’d be terrible in a gingham shirtwaist,” Rilla laughed. “Especially at your mother’s elegant soiree!”

He brushed a finger down her cheek. “It’s nothing to be worried about, you know. Mother made sure to invite only the race of Joseph tonight. And you’ll sparkle among them, Rilla, I just know it. If it comes to that, it’s been a while since I was at one of these things, so...we’ll see if _I_ remember how it all goes!”

He kissed her again, brushing his fingers along the short edges of her waved hair and Rilla leaned eagerly into the kiss.

A pointed cough from the doorway broke them apart.

Persis regarded them with a sister’s tolerant amusement. “Really, Kenneth, must you muss her _now_?”

“ _Right_ now,” Kenneth retorted. “No other time would do. Besides, how am I supposed to resist Rilla?”

His sister rolled her eyes as she brandished a pair of ivory combs and elbowed her brother out of the way. “Give some space, Kenneth. I have to finish off her hair. I’ve had these combs for forever, and they just don’t suit me. But if we tuck one in here, and the other—” She brushed the first comb up through Rilla’s hair, lifting the short curling waves off her neck to be held high behind her ear, then fixed the second one a little higher on the same side. “That should do it!”

Turned towards the mirror, Rilla looked at the fine carvings on the head of the comb: lacy florets surrounding graceful-petalled blooms – in some places carved so thin that the red tint of her hair carried through the ivory.

“It’s beautiful.”

“It suits you. It _matches_ you.” Persis looked positively gleeful. “Oh, I can’t tell you how delightful it is to finally have a sister! Well, Kenneth, do you think you can do her justice?”

Rilla met Kenneth’s eyes in the mirror, and warmed to the kindling of his smile. “I can only try.”

 

 

 

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.   
I love you simply, without problems or pride:  
I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving  
but this, in which there is no I or you,  
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,  
so intimate then when I fall asleep your eyes close.”

– _Pablo Neruda, _100 Love Sonnets_ –_

 


End file.
